First, I wrote shipping news.
Rather than the novels and screenplays I thought I'd write out of college, I got a job writing shipping news for Marine Digest magazine.
While others were moving to Seattle to work at a place called Amazon, I was happy to make $8 an hour to write about ballast water and invasive species to an audience of roughly 2,000 people interested in West Coast ports.
I found the job by opening the phone book and calling every newspaper and magazine to see if they wanted to hire me, a fresh college grad with no professional writing experience. It turns out they did.
What I learned:
- How to work in a (very small) newsroom.
- Where to look for stories.
- How to get people to open up about what they're passionate about.
- Ballast water contains invasive species.
I edited technical manuals.
As the dot-com era was ramping up, I spent six months copy-editing an HTML how-to book. The series with the cute black and white animal drawings on the covers.
What I learned:
- How to get quickly up to speed on technical subject matter.
- How to adhere to a style guide, consistently and accurately.
I went to Disney.
I started at the Walt Disney Internet Group as a copy editor at two daily entertainment news sites. Then I became a staff writer. Then an editor.
Then the dot-com crash changed everything.
Our staff was cut. Then cut again. One of our sites was shuttered. In the middle of all this, we decided to launch a brand-new site, Movies.com. As we clawed our way out of the crash, our site traffic grew. I became a senior editor, a columnist, a video maker. Our team was small, which meant I got to do all the things. It was heaven.
What I learned:
- Tech companies should have revenue models.
- How to run a tight editorial calendar.
- How to interview famous people.
- How to review albums.
- How to write a weekly column.
- How to fly to Burbank every month to make a web series starring Statler & Waldorf.
- How to build and launch a product.
- That I didn't want to move to Los Angeles to advance my career.
I became a creative director.
I answered a mysterious Craigslist ad for a position that sounded exactly like me and had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn't even know what a creative director did. I ended up doing it for almost 11 years. It's my vocation and the thing I'm best at. It's taken me to several continents, and all over the United States. The skills I gained pursuing things like sketch comedy, filmmaking, journalism… They all brought me here.
During my tenure at PBJS we grew from a 20-person indie shop to a 60-person Publicis agency. Our biggest client was Microsoft. We were founded by four ex-MSFT producers and creatives. I was thrown into the deep end and found myself writing, directing videos, doing exec presentations, building a traveling museum, you name it. It felt like home.
What I learned:
- How to have empathy for clients and stakeholders.
- How to rally a team around an idea.
- The value of ideas that can be executed.
- How to create an ecosystem filled with stories that make sense together.
- How to be a conduit between and translator for various disciplines.
- The value of the skills of a generalist.
- How to lead a team and manage people.
The Gates Foundation called.
I had a unique opportunity to move from tech and experiential marketing to global health and development communications. I was tasked with building and evolving a creative team in the comms department. Implementing new processes and working with better agencies. In short: upping the Foundation's creative game.
What I learned:
- How to become a subject matter expert, and fast.
- How to salvage team morale and get back on track.
- The value of process, and the right amount of it.
- How to create content for global markets.
- The usefulness of measurement and research.
- How to convince people on different teams to all work from and contribute to a single content calendar
My Microsoft journey continues.
As Covid forced a sudden transformation of the live-event space, I was brought in by the Microsoft ESC to help strategize and envision what it meant to produce an event at a time when the world was still getting used to Teams calls as the primary way of connecting with colleagues.
Since then, I worked as a vendor embedded on the team to revamp the event briefing process and build a writing discipline to support the Microsoft events portfolio. I've written and edited customer stories, brand-love activations, keynote speeches, videos, blogs, and more.
Most recently, I've worked on the Windows + Devices comms team in support of Pavan Davuluri. In addition to coordinating and producing comms deliverables, I supported keynote speakers at Build 2025, including helping conceive and deliver onstage product demos.
This work has now concluded and I'm looking for my next challenge.
What I have learned (so far):
- How to quickly build a relationship with a high-level stakeholder so that they trust me to help them speak authentically and stay on message.
- The importance of messaging consistency across a plethora of deliverables.
- The value of communicating impact instead of product features.
- How to contextualize technology in a larger, more human story.
- How to diplomatically shepherd a draft through an editing/approval process.
- How to help speakers deliver their message onstage at events, as well as created content to support their stage presence.
Overview
On May 20, 2024, Microsoft introduced the world to a new category of Windows PCs designed for AI: Copilot+ PCs.
The event featured multiple chapters, each led by a Microsoft executive and supported with demos, videos, and guest appearances.
Most recently I supported Pavan Davuluri's Windows + Devices team at Build 2025, which included:
- Developing a content strategy for keynote presentations and product demos
- Scripting keynote speakers and their product demos
- Supporting the rehearsal process leading up to the event
What I did
My remit during the keynote development process:
- Partner with comms team members to outline and write exec talk tracks
- Ensure that talk tracks align with business, PR, and comms goals
- Ensure that voice/tone is consistent throughout the event and its multiple speakers
- Work through the rehearsal process with comms teams and execs to make sure the scripts give presenters everything they need to be successful
Overview
Working with the event design team, I serve as the writer and editor for a variety of brand love activations that take place throughout the year.
These activations aim to increase brand affinity for Microsoft with photo opportunities and interactive content experiences.
What I did
Recent brand love activations have centered on AI, with the goal of starting critical conversations around AI and how it intersects with Microsoft's four AI for Good commitments.
For these I have:
- Written a quiz on the history of AI
- Sourced multiple AI for Good blogs from within Microsoft and reimagined them in the form of a physical brand activation
- Written copy to explain complex tech concepts to event attendees at a glance in a setting with short attention spans
What I learned
Interactive experiences at events have to earn their attention. People are busy and have so many things they want to accomplish.
Learning how to create an experience that is eye-catching and yet substantive enough to start an engaging conversation requires understanding what attendees truly care about.
It also requires taking complicated subject matter and boiling it down to its essence, so that people understand immediately why they should care about the story being told.
Projects like this require me to be an editor first and foremost, with an eye toward finding the right mix of stories and how to create an experience out of them.
Overview
In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development to achieve a better world by 2030.
Started by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Goalkeepers is a catalyst for action toward these goals—including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Barack Obama, and Malala Yousafzai, who shared their stories of leadership and innovative solutions that are driving progress.
What I did
Goalkeepers has three components:
- A campaign to drive awareness, engagement, and media coverage
- An event that takes place over two days at the United Nations General Assembly
- A data report, which consists of a print book and a website featuring data visualizations, videos, and essays
I worked as creative lead on the print data report, videos, and website, and as a creative consultant on the event and campaign strategy.
The data report
I edited and supervised production of the centerpiece of the Goalkeepers experience, the foundation's first ever data report, featuring stories of people around the world working to solve critical health and development problems, as well as data visualizations that tracked progress across every global goal.
This work comprised the print report and its companion website, which featured 6 videos and was translated into 6 languages.
I led the effort from Seattle, working with teams in Europe, Africa, and China.
The event
I consulted on all creative elements of the United Nations event, including stage design, guest speakers, show flow, and screen content.
During the second year of Goalkeepers, my role expanded to include consulting on Bill Gates' keynote session, as well as driving the process by which we selected an event-production vendor.
What I learned
A lot. But mostly I came to understand the value of being the person who builds bridges between teams, whether that's finding the right agency to work with an in-house team or ensuring that internal stakeholders are aligned with campaign strategy.
Launching an event like this, at an organization like the Gates Foundation, is enormously complicated and there are so many moving parts. Being one of the few people on the team that had worked both in events and digital content development was invaluable. And I brushed up on my print production skills.
What I learned
How to get up to speed quickly on a variety of subjects. It didn't take long for me to understand enough about malaria eradication to write a script that passed muster with subject matter experts.
Working with our China team, I learned what communication styles performed best on social channels unavailable in the US and how to create content that felt authentic to that region.
Plus, my agency experience came in handy, as I was able to empathize with teams that weren't entirely familiar with the ways of the Foundation, and as a result, the briefs I wrote for them were quite helpful.
Overview
PBJS (now Publicis Experiences) developed and produced the 2015 Game of Thrones Global Exhibition, taking an immersive, sharable experience across Europe. It was a collaboration between three agencies, comprising a campaign to drive attendance, the design and build of a traveling exhibition space, and digital content-creation opportunities for fans.
The tour engaged nearly 100,000 in its six-city tour from London to Tel Aviv. Media coverage included The Guardian, Forbes and Entertainment Weekly.
My role
I was the creative and design director of the exhibition space, including curation of all props and costumes.
Additionally, I was co-creative director for all digital and social content in collaboration with our digital agency partner.
We were a small team, so it's fair to say you can add a significant amount of project management to my job description, too.
Finally, I served as account lead on behalf of my agency.
Pitch and creative strategy
I developed the winning pitch alongside two of my London colleagues from Publicis UK and Poke.
Then I developed an exhibition narrative and creative strategy – a fan journey that traced a path through key scenes from season 5 and put a spotlight on important characters and memorable moments.
The pitch hinged on the show's morbid reputation and was billed as "The Game of Thrones experience where everybody dies."
Design and production
Working with my design and production teams, we created a design approach was immersive yet practical – important given that the exhibit had to be transported around Europe over the course of two months.
With the aim of transporting fans into the world of Westeros we created 15' to 30' tall fabric walls using images from the show and a flexible exhibition space that could be rearranged to fit each venue, while maintaining the story arc defined in our content strategy.
Exhibit curation
On the show's set in Belfast, I worked with our client to curate a collection of more than 200 props and costumes and placed each within the exhibition's content plan.
I somehow ended up being the wardrobe handler, too.
What I learned
The exhibition embodied all that I love about experiential and event marketing because I got to do a bit of everything. It was one of the most difficult and rewarding jobs I've ever worked.
Building an experience for hardcore fans also set a high bar for subject matter expertise and authenticity, and this required a painstaking attention to detail – every costume, every prop, every line in every video had to be perfect.
The project really polished my project management and account skills – leading three agencies through something as complicated as an exhibition tour, with both physical and digital components, was a real test.
Overview
Imagine Cup is a global competition that encourages computer science students to use their creativity, passion and coding skills to create the next big breakthrough.
Finalists from around the world travel to Seattle to compete in a two-day competition, with the winner chosen on stage with celebrity guests and judges from Microsoft and other companies.
What I learned
Crucial to the success of this project: Listening to execs, understanding their personalities and speech patterns, and writing for them in a way that helped them feel comfortable onstage.
Plus, having empathy for international students, all of whom had traveled to the United States to compete in a high-pressure coding competition. Ensuring that the show format helped them present themselves in the best possible light was of utmost importance.
